


The Calling

by masulevin



Series: Ophelia Cousland, Queen of Ferelden [4]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Pregnancy, The Calling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2019-02-11 19:07:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12941763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/masulevin/pseuds/masulevin
Summary: When Alistair begins to hear the Calling, he hides it from his wife for as long as she can. Fortunately for him, Ophelia is more observant than he thought and decides to confront him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Just Ophelia being loving and supportive. This is a collection of a couple connected pieces I wrote for Alistair Appreciation Week dealing with Alistair and Opehlia and how they face the Calling together.

There’s a song stuck in his head. It’s been there for a few days, always tickling at the back of his mind, making him hum along when the air around him is too quiet. It sneaks into his dreams too, painting them dark like they were during the Blight. He wakes up more nights than not with a startled gasp, heart pounding, and has to sneak away to the library so he won’t wake Lia while he’s waiting to relax enough to fall back asleep.

She notices though. She always knows when something’s bothering him, even before he’s quite figured it out himself. She’s learned so much about him over the few years they’ve been married – he’s constantly grateful that Teagan brought her to Denerim.

She finds him in the library after yet another nightmare, staring into the fire that he’d had to stoke himself. His feet are bare, stretched out in front of the large chair he’d dragged over, his trousers and shirt loosely tied on his way down the hall.

He turns when the library door creaks open, and smiles despite himself when she slips inside. Her hair is down in loose waves to her elbows, her sleeping shirt – his shirt, really – brushing her thighs under the thick robe she always wears untied.

She takes his hand when he offers it to her and lets him pull her into his lap. She settles easily, tucking herself around him, and wraps her arms around his neck. She kisses his temple as he finds somewhere comfortable to rest his hands – one on her warm leg, the other around her back – then asks the question he’s been dreading.

“What’s wrong?”

“What makes you think something’s wrong?” He toys with the ends of her hair and avoids looking at her face, but he can still hear her sigh at his evasion.

She puts her fingers on his chin and tilts his face up until he’s finally forced to give in and look at her. She’s tired, circles under her eyes that he’s not used to seeing, and the sight makes his heart ache. Has his sleeping problem been bothering her too?

“I wake up and you’re gone,” she says, voice barely above a whisper. “I wake up and you’re muttering in your sleep. I wake up and you’re humming that damn song.” She strokes his cheek, thumb scraping through days-old beard. “Talk to me, please.”

He closes his eyes, his fingers still tangling in her hair, and heaves a great sigh. He stays silent until she closes the distance between them to rest their foreheads together, that little bit of contact giving him the courage to finally speak aloud what he’s barely been able to admit even to himself in the wee hours of the morning.

“It’s… the Calling.” He speaks slowly as though each word is being pulled from him against his will. Ophelia freezes in his lap, her breath catching in her throat. They’ve spoken of the Calling before, of what may come to pass, but neither of them expected it for five or ten years more. To have it now, not long after their wedding… “I can hear it all the time. It’s faint, still, but it’s there. It’s worse when I’m sleeping.” His voice catches too and he falls silent, gripping her hip to hold her close.

She runs the fingers of both hands into his hair, holding his head in place. He opens his eyes to see that she’s staring at him from a scant inch away, blue eyes boring into his darker ones. “How long?”

He blinks once, thinking. “A few weeks.”

Her fingers tighten in his hair and he winces as her fingernails dig into his scalp. “How much longer?” she asks, and he isn’t sure if she’s correcting her earlier question or asking a new one.

He answers anyway. “I don’t know. Duncan never told me.”

“Soon?” Her eyes look wet. Alistair closes his and thinks.

“I don’t think so.”

She sits up and nods once, hands still in his hair. “We’ll find a cure.” She’s so determined – her jaw is set, her eyes glittering, her shoulders squared – that he almost doesn’t want to tell her that there isn’t a cure, that there’s nothing she can do this time to help him.

“Lia–” he starts, but she cuts him off without hesitation.

“Don’t you ‘Lia’ me,” she snaps. Despite himself, Alistair smiles up at her. “I don’t care what it takes. We are going to find you a cure and you’re going to stay with me.” His smile falters when her voice cracks. Her eyes flash in anger, but he knows it isn’t at him. She clears her throat and starts again. “You’re not going to get rid of me that quickly, my dear.”

He nods at her, unable to argue for one more second, and pulls her closer to rest his head against her chest. She wraps her arms around his shoulders and puts her chin on the top of his head, sighing heavily. She squeezes tighter for a moment before relaxing and just holding him close.

She pets him slowly, fingers calming him as they run through his hair, across his shoulders, and down his back. He hums in contentment, focusing on her nails as they scrape pleasantly over his skin instead of the constant humming in his mind.

As soon as she feels him beginning to relax against her, she kisses the top of his head and starts to pull away. “Come to bed.”

He shakes his head and tries to hold her in his lap, but she wiggles free and stands up. She holds out her hand to him, but he doesn’t take it. Instead, he says, “I won’t be able to sleep.”

She blinks at him, then a smirk he knows well twists her lips. “I said come to bed, not go to sleep,” she points out as though that should be obvious.

He blinks back, then the tension that had been growing in his shoulders again goes loose once more. “Oh,” he breathes, and her smirk grows.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This scene takes place a few weeks after chapter one.

Alistair wakes from yet another dream of darkspawn with a muffled gasp and cold sweat beading on his skin. Sunlight pours in through the sheer curtains, reminding him where he is and that he’s  _safe_ , and he forces his muscles to relax as he heaves in great lungfuls of air.

He watches the dust motes floating lazily in the sun, swirling in gusts of wind he can’t feel. He forces himself to look for patterns in their movements instead of remembering the darkness of his dream.

He stays still until the door swings open and then latches closed again and quiet footsteps cross the room. The mattress dips on the other side of the bed, and only then does he turn his head to see his wife kneeling next to him.

Her hair is down the way he loves it, dark waves falling to her elbows, looking almost blue as the light catches it. She smiles softly as she cups his jaw, fingers scraping through the beard he hasn’t been able to work up the energy to shave.

He closes his eyes under her attention, arching into her touch like a cat. She scrapes her nails against the skin of his jaw, pushing harder until he turns his head and opens his eyes to really look at her. She’s smiling down at him, cheeks a little pink, and he arches his brows at her.

“What is it?” he asks, voice a little hoarse from disuse.

Her smile grows a bit as she moves, adjusting the folds of her dress so she can straddle him. His hands settle on her waist automatically, body warming as he waits for her to speak again.

Once she’s comfortable, she does: “I have good news and I have bad news. Which would you like first?”

He licks his lips as he considers, pleasantly distracted from her words by her weight on top of him. “I suppose… bad news first?” he asks, voice rising with uncertainty.

Strangely, her smile just grows a bit more. “Good choice. The bad news is that you’re going to have to help me pick out  _several_ new dresses.”

That… wasn’t what he expected. He plays off his confusion by running his hands over the fabric of her current dress, which seems perfectly fine to him. His fingers splay over the curve of her hips, then up the boned corset to follow the dip of her waist and up to stop just under her breasts. “It’s a grave responsibility,” he intones, chancing another look back at her face. Her eyes are shining. “I can manage it, I think. What’s the… good news?”

He lets his hands continue exploring as she opens her mouth to speak, but she tilts her head back with a little sigh instead. She looks back at him after a moment. “I’ve just come from the healer,” she says, and Alistair’s heart stops beating. Isn’t that what someone says before the  _bad_ news portion of this game? What could the good news be if the bad news means new dresses?

His heart starts beating once more only so it can stop again, this time more painfully. He sits up, putting them face-to-face, and now he can see the moisture in her eyes.

“Lia?” he rasps, arms clutching her tight to him.

She rests her arms on his shoulders, playing with the soft hair at the nape of his neck. “We finally did it,” she says. “We’re going to have a baby.”

Her voice wavers and that’s all he can handle. He flips them both, rolling her onto her back so he can rest his head on her chest. She clutches him tight as his shoulders begin to shake, running her fingers through her hair even as her dress becomes wet under his face.

Despite what Teagan seems to think, they  _have_ been trying – and they’ve been trying for nearly six years now. They knew it might never happen, that his time as a Warden might have damned them to childlessness in a place where heirs are essential, but they hadn’t stopped trying.

And now… now…

Now that the Calling has finally come for him, now that his nights are spent awake and his afternoons spent trapped in nightmares that won’t end, now that every waking moment is spent with the archdemon’s song loud in the back of his mind…

Now his family is growing, finally,  _finally_ , and he won’t be around to see it.

His tears come rougher then as the happiness turns to mourning for what he’ll never have. His clutch on Ophelia becomes tighter, then looser, then he slides down to rest his head against her stomach. It’s a little uncomfortable with the corset holding her body into the shape deemed appropriate by court, but it’s easy enough to imagine the gentle sloping of her belly that will soon begin to grow and swell.

She feels the moment his mood shifts. “Alistair, what–” she stops, takes a deep breath as her voice begins to shake, and tries again. “I thought you would be happy, Al.”

He sucks in a deep breath and searches for the strength to calm down so he can offer his wife the assurance he knows she needs now. “I am,” he says, though his voice cracks. “How long?”

“Six months,” she says. “Maybe six and a half. I’m not very far along, yet.” She runs her fingers into his hair again, then tugs so he’ll look up at her. “What is it?”

He blinks to clear his vision, then scrambles back so she can sit up. She does, leaning back on her hands, and he sits back on his heels, almost looming over her. He looks down at the dress she’s wearing, now with two large damp spots from his tears, and he wipes at his face with both hands.

“Six months,” he echoes. “I… I can make it six more months.”

The words hang heavy between them for a long moment until Ophelia’s face twists into an expression he knows well. He shies away as she rises up onto her knees, lifting one hand to poke at his chest as she raises her voice.

“You’ll make it six more months and then fifty more years,” she snaps, cheeks pink for a completely different reason than earlier. He swallows hard, tears almost forgotten in the face of her anger. “We’re finding a cure, remember? You’re going to live long enough to see our  _children_ have children.” She pushes him again and he rocks back before catching her wrist with one hand. She swats at him with the other, so he catches that too. “I can’t sit here and watch you give up, Alistair. You have to  _fight_. If you won’t fight for  _me_ , fight for our  _child_.”

She yanks away from his grip, so he lets her go, but she just takes one of his hands and presses it to her stomach. She holds it there with both of hers, as though he’s supposed to be able to feel something, and stares into his eyes with hers sparking at him.

“You have to  _fight_ ,” she repeats. “You  _must_.”

He finds himself nodding before her words have really sunk in. Then he says, “Yes, yes, I promise,” and she releases him to throw her arms around his neck. He runs his hand over the back of her head and down her hair, smoothing it, heart squeezing tight as she, somewhat uncharacteristically, sobs against his shirt.

“I’m sorry,” he says, over and over. “I’m sorry. I’ll – I’ll write to Sophie, to Weisshaupt. I should have sooner. I’ll find something. I’m sorry.”

He knows even as he speaks that Weisshaupt is less likely than Sophie to respond to him, and he hasn’t received a letter from her in the eight years they’ve spent apart. He needs to try though. For Ophelia, for their child.

He will not let them down. He will  _not_ leave them alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoiler alert: Sophie's hearing the Calling too, and she's already on the case. You can pry happy endings out of my cold, dead hands.


End file.
